Sustainability Q & A

What is SAP’s sustainability strategy?

SAP defines sustainability as the holistic management of social, environmental, and economic risks and opportunities to increase short- and long-term profitability. In line with this definition, we aim to move from a separate sustainability strategy to a sustainable corporate strategy. This means we seek to embed sustainability in everything we do: our solutions, our operations, and our social investment.

What solutions does SAP offer in the area of sustainability?

SAP helps companies run more sustainably with innovations that increase profits, engage people and communities, and protect natural resources to have a positive economic, environmental, and social impact on the world, and touch the lives of billions of people. Solutions from SAP help the world run better and more sustainably. SAP is helping its customers achieve more sustainable operations through a range of solutions that address energy, environmental, health, and safety needs.

Specifically, SAP enables large and small enterprises to increase long-term and short-term profitability by holistically managing the opportunities and risks associated with economic, environmental, and societal concerns.

What is integrated reporting and what is SAP’s involvement in it?

The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC, http://www.theiirc.org/) defines integrated reporting as „a process that results in communication, most visibly a periodic ‚integrated report‘, about value creation over time. An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term.“ SAP is a member of the IIRC pilot program and published the SAP Integrated Report 2014 – SAP’s third integrated report - in March 2015 at www.sapintegratedreport.com.

What is the employee engagement index?

We define employee engagement as a score for the level of employee commitment, pride, and loyalty, as well as our employees’ feeling of being an advocate of SAP. It is calculated based on the results of regular employee surveys. Employee engagement remains one of SAP’s four corporate strategic goals, along with growth, profitability, and customer loyalty. In 2014, we achieved an overall employee engagement score of 79%, compared to 77% in 2013. We aim at achieving a score of 82% by 2015.

Especially considering SAP’s transition to the cloud, what steps is SAP taking to ensure it achieves its carbon reduction target?

SAP aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to their year 2000 level by 2020.

Since 2014, SAP has been powering all internal and external data centers and facilities globally with 100% renewable electricity. The shift helps minimize the company’s carbon footprint as it moves to a cloud business model, and helps eliminate carbon emissions caused by its customers’ systems by moving them into a green cloud.

SAP has developed strict quality guidelines for the procurement of renewable energy certificates together with CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). These guidelines define the accepted sources of renewable energy (solar, wind, biogas, geothermal, and hydro; biomass is only considered if not related to deforestation), and that the power plant may not be older than 10 years.

Further, SAP aims to increase the portion of electric vehicles in its company car fleet to 20 percent by 2020. In alignment with its existing policy for office business and data centers, at SAP locations electric company cars are charged only from 100 percent renewable sources.

What are your global policies that govern employee behavior and avoid corruption?

Our compliance management system details our policies and procedures for ensuring ethical business conduct. Our policies govern the conduct of our management, employees, suppliers and partners, as well as critical areas of our business such as sales, vendor selection, and payroll. In addition, we train employees on the SAP Code of Business Conduct for Employees, which includes guidelines on bribery, antitrust, and a host of other topics. In the case of any breaches of compliance, we take appropriate remedial action.

You can find more information in the SAP Integrated Report, Business Conduct section.

How is your sustainability department structured?

Our goal is to ensure that sustainability is embedded across our business, exemplified by our integrated report and integrated approach to measuring business performance. We have been successful in embedding sustainability professionals across our lines of business, e.g. in development, finance, communications, human resources, IT operations, or facility management.

Luka Mucic, CFO of SAP, is the Sustainability sponsor on the SAP Executive Board. This ensures that there is a dedicated Board member overseeing this significant priority, which is a key to our path towards simplification.

Daniel Schmid, Chief Sustainability Officer, and his team focus on driving sustainability into SAP’s operations. The sustainability team reports into the office of the CFO.

Dieter Haesslein drives the innovation of SAP’s sustainability products as Chief Product Owner of the Sustainability and EHS product unit, part of our development organization.